Pete Howard is a serious collector seeking old (pre-1970) concert posters and music memorabilia, and who pays the very best prices. He lives in San Luis Obispo, Calif. Please contact him at pete@postercentral.com or (805) 540-0020.

Folk musician Eric Von Schmidt designed this poster specifically for Dylan and Baez, as well as identical-looking, smaller flyers & handbills.

This video shows off a blank poster and handbill… before the date, city, venue and ticket-buying information was printed at the top.

This Bob Dylan & Joan Baez window card was designed for the their brief spring 1965 tour of some Eastern cities.

This Bob Dylan Joan Baez concert poster & handbill have been seen from the duo’s shows at the New Haven Arena in New Haven, Conn. on March 6; the Syria Mosque in Pittsburgh, PA on March 17 & 18; Reynolds Coliseum in Raleigh, NC on March 19; and the Convention Hall in Philadelphia, PA on March 5.

An enduringly popular Bob Dylan Joan Baez poster image by Eric Von Schmidt which invokes the spirit of Toulouse-Lautrec, the French painter and illustrator from the late 1800s.

Bob Dylan ’60s concert broadsides like this are collectible today because they were produced strictly as pre-event advertising pieces, to be discarded afterwards.

I will pay the best price you’ll find for an original copy of this Bob Dylan – Joan Baez poster – literally, thousands of dollars – if it has the venue and ticket information printed at the top. Or, somewhat less than that for a blank. I also pay TOP DOLLAR for any original 1960s Dylan concert poster, as long as it was printed before the show. Just contact Pete Howard at telephone 805-540-0020, or email pete@postercentral.com.

And, I should point out, if you like seeing vintage Bob Dylan concert posters like this, be sure to check out more Dylan poster images from the ’60s found on this page of my web site: http://www.postercentral.com/bobdylan.htm

3 Responses to Bob Dylan Joan Baez Window Card & Handbill 1965

I received this well-informed comment from mthivier over on my YouTube channel, so I’m taking the liberty of copying & pasting it here. Thanks for sending it, Mark!:

Some addit’l info: from Joan’s 1987 memoir — there was a lot of debate in early ’65 about who was the bigger star (Joan rose to fame first, and then introduced a then unknown Dylan at her concerts, but by 1965 his fame was beginning to eclipse hers). Given this, Von Schmidt designed the poster to accommodate both of their egos, with Joan’s name coming first, but Dylan’s higher up than hers. Also, supposedly, the reason Dylan didn’t like the poster was because he was depicted wearing his “hobo” hat, as this was around the time Dylan was beginning to outgrow his “vagabond” image.

The poster is based on a 1964 photograph by Dick Waterman taken at Boston’s Club 47. Some comments have been made about the positioning of the bodies and names for equal billing. In fact, the positioning is as it appears in the photo. Dylan is “higher” in the photograph and Baez is “first” (to the left) sitting down listening as Bob plays. A “cigarette” appearing in the photo has been removed from Dylan’s mouth for the poster.

The “French-like artwork” mentioned in your blog is executed more specifically in the style of Toulouse-Lautrec.

Comments regarding the poster design and Dylan’s reaction include the following from Eric Von Schmidt’s book “Baby, Let Me Follow You Down”…

Von Schmidt: I tried to give equal importance to both Joan and Bob because I liked them both a lot, and they were equally important as far as I was concerned.

Waterman: In early ’65, I was doing a little work for Manny Greenhill. The Dylan/Baez tour was coming up and the posters which Eric had done came into the office. Dylan was doing a concert at Bridgewater State, so I took one down. Dylan looked at it. He asked if he could keep it and went out and did the show. On Monday morning, I went into the office and Manny said, “What the hell happened over the weekend? I came in this morning and Albert had been calling me, telling me that Bob wanted to kill the poster.” Evidently, he felt that his nose looked too Semitic. Who knows. At any rate, that’s the birth and death of a poster.

Von Schmidt: I couldn’t believe it. Everybody was worried about their noses; Albert thought Joan’s looked too big. Manny thought Dylan was too prominent. I thought, “Did Lautrec have to put up with this shit?”

So maybe it was about vanity and not ego of top billing. Dylan was highly sensitive about his Jewish roots, initially hiding his Zimmerman identity from the press and even from his first Village girlfriend, Suze Rotolo.